Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Illustration

The Illustration BFA program encompasses a wide range of professional markets, including graphic narratives from children's books to comics, character design, concept art, editorial, and surface design.

Cultivate Professional Illustration Practices

The Illustration program is all about productivity, professionalism, and serious play: you choose illustration because you have a story to tell, a character to bring to life, a sequence to storyboard, or are just compelled to make stuff. Using visual language and a wide range of tools and methods, you'll have the skills to conceptualize and execute projects that prepare you for a career in the professional world. We promote a variety of approaches to studio work, from traditional to experimental, from 2D to 3D, from classic mediums to the latest digital technology.

You'll begin with courses like Illustration Now, which combines making lots of work with exploring the many areas that contemporary illustrators occupy. Followed by Principles of Illustration in your second semester, where you learn the process by which great illustrative ideas are conceived and developed with art direction into compelling images. Your first year builds the foundation for you to become more sophisticated and thus professional in developing concepts, using appropriate techniques, and creating and presenting engaging work. This is an ongoing and iterative undertaking that begins in art school and continues throughout your art career.

Student Adrian Poole Shares His Experience in the BFA Illustration Program

We guide you to your goals through rigorous and engaging course work and critique, individual mentoring, healthy and supportive competition and collaboration with your peers. Our active community includes the Illustration Club, well known visiting artists, trips to museums and other places of interest, exciting professional internships, and a philosophy of involvement in global and popular culture.

We know that the successful illustrator has a strong and unique voice that combines ideas, mediums and techniques, and the professional marketing skills to successfully promote work - from visual narratives in children's books and comics, to character design, storyboard, editorial, and surface design, Illustration offers infinite possibilities for you to leave your mark.

Department Mission

We are committed to your growth through a solid general education and studio based learning. It is our goal to help you develop awareness and self-direction as well as critical thinking and the concrete skills of your craft. We are committed to your development as an artist who knows the value of hard work, passion, innovation, fearlessness, collaboration, and play. Illustrators are shapers of popular culture both high and low; you've got something to give the world and we are here to facilitate that.

Department Outcomes

Specific evolution of skills for Illustration Majors:

Generation and communication of concepts through drawing, research, and language

Skillful use of traditional, technological, and innovative mediums and techniques

Combination of concept and medium to create a unique visual voice and compelling work

Knowledge of contemporary professional practices to market work and skills

Featured Courses

IILLU 3275 Alternative Comix

Beyond traditional super-heroic narratives, sequential art in America (and beyond) is wide-open in both content and format. From short, autobiographical meditations to thousand page historical epics, indy and alternative authors create comics from low-tech to polished, from low-brow to avant garde. Weekly assignments will push your storytelling skills, while class lectures demonstrate the vast range of comic book genres and production methods. Your comics can be anything you want, and in this class, they will be.​

IILLU 2260 Animal Anatomy

Animal Anatomy The course is an introduction to the study of animal anatomy and kinesiology through drawing animals from life, animal skeletons and taxidermied specimens. It is designed to help create animal or animalistic characters as well as biologically accurate illustrations.​